Samuel Cooper: General Orders, No. 65, August 15, 1864

GENERAL ORDERS, No. 65.}

ADJT. AND INSP. GENERAL'S OFFICE,        

Richmond, Va., August 15, 1864.

I. It having been represented to the War Department that there are numbers of foreigners, entrapped by artifice and fraud into the military and naval service of the United States, who would gladly withdraw from further participation in the inhuman warfare waged against a people who have never given them a pretext for hostility, and that there are many inhabitants of the United States now retained in that service against their will who are adverse to aiding in the unjust war now being prosecuted against the Confederate States, and it being also known that these men are prevented from abandoning such compulsory service by the difficulty they experience in escaping therefrom, it is ordered that all such persons, coming within the lines of the Confederate armies, shall be received, protected, and supplied with means of subsistence until such of them as desire it can be forwarded to the most convenient points on the border, when all facilities will be afforded them to return to their homes.

By order:

S. COOPER,        

Adjutant and Inspector General.

SOURCE: The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 35, Part 2 (Serial No. 66), p. 621